The Social Conquest of Earth: A Book Review

Humans, considered by many to be the most successful creature, the pinnacle of evolution, and the height of intelligence, have survived nearly any climate and thrived in many different environments. The title of ‘most successful creature’ however, may have to be shared with a far less exalted, but equally social animal, the lowly ant. As famed Harvard naturalist Edward O. Wilson explains in his new book The Social Conquest of Earth, there are many similarities between ants and humans that have caused their great evolutionary success, and he suggests a theory of  ‘group selection’ to explain how two such different creatures could become so successful.

Wilson begins in characteristically philosophical fashion, seeking to answer the age-old existential questions “Where do we come from? What are we? Where are we going?” He looks for the explanation for human success by exploring our similarities to other species. He finds both humans and ants are ‘eusocial’ species, or animals who naturally form multi-generational communities with a specific division of labor and a tendency for some members to exhibit altruistc behavior on behalf of the community.

Professor Wilson’s book is filled with fascinating examples of formic eusocial behaviors. Weaver ants, in living chains to pull leaves and other biological material to construct shelters for their above-ground colonies; army ants in Africa march in columns millions strong, taking down animals the size of a small dog in their path. Other ant-colonies have also been observed engaged in long-term ‘wars’ with other nearby colonies for food resources and ‘arable’ land. Such parallels with human construction, migration and warlike behaviors are striking.

Professor Wilson, however, makes clear distinctions between these two ‘conquerors’ of the Earth. Social insects, including ants, which evolved over 100 million years, have “small brains and pure instinct”, reproduce only among select individuals (the colony ‘queens’), and have become vital to sustaining the environmental status quo. Humans, however, have rapidly evolved as a species over the past 4 million years, a blink of evolutionary time, and nature, as Wilson aptly puts it “could not co-evolve fast enough to accommodate the onslaught of a spectacular conqueror that seemed to come from nowhere.”

Unlike insects, each human individual competes for material and sexual resources, and yet generally finds it more useful to work in social communities to gratify needs and expand natural domains. From this point, Professor Wilson constructs his theory of group selection, in which a gene for altruistic behavior can thrive even if it is disadvantageous for the individual, so long as it gives the individual’s community an overall advantage over other communities. The more willing an individual is to get along with other individuals of its species and merge its interest with the interest of the group, the more likely it is that that species will out-compete others.

Wilson’s theory is controversial among evolutionary biologists, and he perhaps carries its implications to their logical extremes, but The Social Conquest of Earth is nevertheless a fascinating exploration into the ‘how’ and ‘why’ humans and other certain animals have become so wildly successful. Though he does dismiss philosophy and psychology as not being ‘scientific’ enough to explain the origins of such concepts as virtue and complex emotion, Professor Wilson is first and foremost a skilled scientist, and his theories, masterfully written and accessible to even the non-scientist, warrant serious consideration.

Rating: 5/5